Family Ties
by Cassie Valentine
Summary: Preseries. Luke talks, Rory listens.


I know, I know, angsty angsty. But, I watched the ep where Luke's Dark Day is discussed and this is what came out.

* * *

"Luke?"

"Yeah Rory?" Luke asked as he topped off her apple juice, a compromise to the greasy fries and burger the 12 year old was eating.

"Never mind," she said, chickening out. Luke watched as she turned her attention back to her fries, the burger already gone.

"What is it?" he asked her again, depositing the apple juice container on the counter next to her and focused his attention on her. Rory played with her fork, pushing a few fries around.

"Where were you on Thursday?" she asked suddenly. This threw Luke and wasn't really sure how to respond. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, blushing as she looked down at her plate. Luke watched as he hair fell over her face, allowing her a little privacy to collect herself. "I shouldn't have asked." He sighed as he glanced around at the nearly empty diner. Lorelai had been called to the Inn for something and she had left Rory in the diner with a book and $20. Luke didn't mind because Rory was quiet and knew how to behave.

"I, uh," he said quietly as he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I was upstairs," he finally blurted out. "The 30th was the anniversary of my dad's death," he told her. "My mom died when Liz, my sister, and I were young, my dad a few years before I opened the diner." Rory looked up at him with big blue eyes. The two stared at each other for a long moment before Luke quickly turned away from her. He cleared his throat as he went back to playing with the coffee pots.

"Was it sudden?" Rory asked quietly after a moment. "I've read that it's better when people die suddenly," she started to babble. "It can be painless, and the family knows they didn't suffer. Of course, when some one dies suddenly, the family doesn't get a chance to say good bye, but they also don't have to watch them suffer."

"It wasn't sudden," he told her, without turning around. Rory watched as he stopped playing with the coffee maker and let his head fall back for a moment. He turned and looked at her eventually, nodding towards a table in the back. Rory grabbed her juice and headed to the table, Luke following behind her with coffee and pie. "When my mom died, they wouldn't let anyone under 14 in to visit, the circumstances didn't matter," he told her as he set a plate of apple pie in front of her before he filled a cup of coffee for her. Rory sat quietly as Luke left her to think about that as he returned the coffee pot to the machine to keep it warm.

* * *

A 13 year old Luke stood at the stove for another night in a row as a 11 year old Liz set the kitchen table.

"Three places, Liz," Luke reminded as he glanced over his shoulder to see her setting the 4th place.

"Dad said mom might come home and when she does, she's gonna have a place," she insisted as she finished tucking the napkin under the fork of the 4th setting. Luke rolled his eyes and shrugged as he turned back to the stove and the gravy he was finishing up. Mrs. Cassini had dropped off a small roast, already cooked. He had simply warmed it up and cooked the sides.

"Grab a couple of serving bowls," he called to his sister as he pulled the pot of potatoes towards him and began mashing. "One for the potatoes and one for the beans," he said. "And the milk and butter out of the fridge," he added. Liz rolled her eyes as she went rooting through the cupboard to the left of the sink, pulling out two bowls before heading to the fridge to find the butter and the milk.

"Here," she said, putting the milk carton on the counter beside the stove and the butter on the table. Luke quickly mixed in some milk and a little more butter than was proper, just like his mom always did before he pilled the potatoes into the first bowl. The green beans quickly got a pat of butter before they were tossed into the second bowl. Liz grabbed the bowls and put them on the table before she went to fill the coffee filter. Their dad always had a cup of coffee after dinner and liked to be able to just get up and turn the maker on before desert.

"Dad's home," Luke commented when he heard the front door to the house open and close.

"Daddy!" Liz yelled out as she dashed from the kitchen. Luke sighed and went back to the stove, carefully pulling out the roast and depositing it on a small platter.

"Luke?" he heard his dad call.

"Just a minute," he said as he found the carving fork and knife for his dad. He deposited the platter in the middle of the kitchen table before he headed to the living room.

"Take a seat," Luke said as he nodded towards the couch. Luke looked at his father and took a deep breath before he walked to the couch and took a seat beside his sister. What happened next was kind of a blur. His dad took a seat on the coffee table and stared at his feet for a moment. Luke glanced over at Liz when he felt her shift a little closer to him, like she did when he took her to scary movies at the Black, White and Read theatre. "You two know your mom was sick," Will said, still not looking up at the kids.

"Mom is sick," Liz corrected him. Luke looked at his dad again when he realised the difference in verb tense.

"Was sick Elizabeth," Will said, finally looking up at his kids. A heavy silence fell over the living room as this sunk into Luke and Liz's heads. Liz reacted first, her eyes tearing up before she flung herself into her fathers arms, looking for comfort and some kind of confirmation that he was wrong. Luke could only collapse into the sofa, the ugly yellow sofa his mother had picked out shortly before she had gotten sick. Will held his daughter close, running a hand over the back of her head as his eyes focused on his son. "Luke? Lucas?" he asked, just loud enough to be heard over Liz.

"I'll go put dinner in the oven to keep it warm," was all he said as he got up from the couch and headed to the kitchen. Luke sagged against the counter top, just out of view of his father. A few tears escaped as he tried to will the tight feeling in his chest and throat away. He swallowed hard a few times before he transferred the roast back into the pan slipping it and the bowls of potatoes, beans and gravy into the oven to keep them warm.

* * *

The family eventually gathered around the table to eat dinner.

"Well, we have all this food, best not let it go to waste," Will had said as he ushered the kids into the kitchen. Luke watched as his father silently carved the roast while Liz, tears still in her eyes, couldn't take her eyes off of the place she had set in hopes that her mother was going to come home. "You don't have to eat it all," he told the kids as he finished serving the roast and took his own seat.

Liz managed to eat a few beans and a few mouth fulls of potatoes and roast before she pushed away from the table, saying she felt sick. Luke and his dad listened as she ran up the stairs and slammed her door. Luke pushed the potatoes around his plate, unable to bring himself to eat any before he heaved a sigh and forced himself to eat the beans and meat.

"Coffee?" he asked his dad when dinner was done.

"Not tonight," Will replied. "Do you have any home work?"

"Some," Luke replied.

"Why don't you go get a start on it, I'll clean up," Will said. Luke and his dad shared a look; cleaning up after dinner had always been Luke's job.

"Dad," Luke started.

"Go," he said again. "I've got it." The men shared another look before Luke quietly pushed away from the table and headed upstairs. He sat in his room for a moment before he dashed to the bathroom and revisited dinner.

Luke decided then and there that he didn't really need to eat red meat again. Ever.

"The funeral was a few weeks later," he told Rory, playing with the rim of the cup of tea he had gotten himself at some point. "Everyone in town came out. Stars Hollow is good for that, you know?"

"I know," Rory replied as she pushed her now empty pie plate away from her.

"When my dad. . . It was different," Luke said after a moment of silence. Rory nearly dropped her coffee cup when she heard this. She hadn't expected to hear about this after he had spilled out the story about his mother. Rory opened her mouth to tell him that it was okay, he didn't need to say anything, but he was already out of his seat, heading off to refill the coffee cups of a couple of stragglers in the diner. She watched as he quickly gave them their bills and made some changed before he left them to finish their coffee.

* * *

The Doctors had been telling him for years that his dad didn't have much time left, but Luke had stopped believing them. He had deferred his entrance to college for two years after his dad had gotten sick, believing the doctors when they told him that death came suddenly in cases like this, that one day his dad would be fine and the next he wouldn't. So he had stayed in town, to help run the hardware store, keep his dad's medical insurance valid and to try and keep Liz from killing herself.

Since their mother had died, she had changed, slipped away from them. She had forced all her friends away and had replaced them with the rougher group, Crazy Carrie being their leader. Luke hated Crazy Carrie, even if he had made out with her that one time when they were both high. He had really hoped she wouldn't remember, God knows he tried not to remember, but she brought it up every chance she got.

When he couldn't defer his entrance to college any more, Luke gave up his spot. His father was mostly bed ridden down and Liz was starting to get out of control. She was out all hours of the night, not even bothering to hide how drunk or high she was when she came home or how many classes she skipped that week.

Luke had started taking the meetings with the principal so his dad didn't have to know.

"How were your classes today?" Will asked, speaking for the first time since Luke had settled himself in the chair that resided in the corner of the small hospital room.

"They were fine," Luke answered. Luke had only ever lied to his father once as a child, about where he had gotten some small plastic toy Will wouldn't buy him. He lied to his father every day now. Will had it in his head that Luke went to college and Luke had stopped trying to convince him other wise, it just made him agitated and neither of them needed that right now.

"And Elizabeth, she's doin' ok in school?"

"She gets good grades," he lied again. Liz had barely graduated high school. She had walked across the stage pregnant and taken off to New York with her looser boyfriend soon after. A few weeks later she called, she sounded drunk to Luke, to tell him that she and Jimmy had gotten married and she showed up a few weeks after that to tell him that they had been evicted and needed a place to stay. Jess had arrived a few days later and Jimmy had gone out to get diapers and had not come back a few days after that.

Luke put Jess and Liz up for a while before he came home from the hospital one day and found them gone. At least he knew that she had stopped in to see Will once.

Luke leaned forward in the chair and rested his elbows on his knees as he cradled his head in his hands. He watched as he father stilled and drifted off to sleep again. Luke sighed heavily as he realized he was going to have to sit in that room for hours until his father awoke again. If he left without saying good bye, his father became agitated and the staff ended up calling him back anyways because he was too sick to sedate.

Will Danes finally died a few weeks after Luke's 26th birthday and in typical Liz style, she was too busy to come home. She did manage to call him the day after their father died, crying that the latest loser she had hooked up with had smacked her and Jess around before he took off with all her stuff.

* * *

"So, as I headed off to New York, again, Stars Hollow ignored me, again, and had the funeral organized by the time I got back." Rory and Luke both sat back in their chairs as his story sunk in.

"It's what Stars Hollow does," Rory said eventually.

"I guess," he said with a bit of a chuckle. "I, uh, I haven't. . . "

"I won't say anything," Rory promised. Luke rarely opened up to any one about anything, so she understood what this meant. "Not even to mom," she assured him. The corners of Luke's mouth quirked up as he offered her a nod. He knew that she understood him when she promised not to tell Lorelai.

"How about some more pie?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I think I'm okay," she said, offering him a smile.

"Ok," he said as he stood up from the table, grabbing her empty plate as he went.

"Daughter of mine! Are you still here?" Lorelai called as she burst into the diner, disturbing the quiet that had fallen over it while Luke and Rory had been talking.

"I'm here," Rory said with a smile as she stood up and gathered her things.

"We're you good?" Lorelai asked as she held Rory's book while she got her coat on.

"I was good," Rory said as she concentrated on doing up the buttons. She smirked as she knew that her mother was casting a glance at Luke, looking for confirmation.

"What did you two do?" she asked as she handed Rory back her book.

"Talked."

"About?"

"The diner," Rory answered as they headed for the door. "Bye Luke, thanks!" Rory called out, offering Luke a smile.

"Yeah, thanks Luke," Lorelai called, offering him a smile of her own. He smiled and gave them a nod as he watched the Gilmore Girls slip out into the cold night before he wandered slowly to the door, flipping the sign to closed before he went about closing the diner.


End file.
